Pope really is defined by enemies

Thursday

Dec 12, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Dianne Williamson

If it's true that you can judge a man by his enemies, Pope Francis is making all the right ones.

Rush Limbaugh, who implied that the pope is a pinko commie. Sarah Palin, who complained that the pope sounded "kind of liberal" and later apologized. Adam Shaw, a news editor at Fox News, who hurled the biggest insult of a conservative, by likening the pope to the president.

"Like Obama, Francis is unable to see the problems that are really endangering his people," Shaw wrote. "Like Obama he mistakes the faithful for the enemy, the enemy for his friend, condescension for respect, socialism for justice and capitalism for tyranny."

You can't expect the right wing to cede control of the church without a fight, but it's a fight they'll lose, because they're hopelessly out of touch, while the message of Pope Francis is resonating. In just a few short months he has recaptured the hearts of lapsed Catholics around the world, along with those who hunger for a leader more focused on Jesus than on judgment, more enthused by compassion than condemnation.

Still, just as the pope was named Person of the Year by Time magazine Wednesday, there are those within his own flock who are speaking out against his message of inclusiveness and his refusal to obsess over hot-button social issues that have long divided the faithful.

In nearby Rhode Island, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin has publicly griped that the pope doesn't spend enough time opposing abortion and the rights of gay people who love each other to marry.

"I'm a little bit disappointed in Pope Francis that he hasn't, at least that I'm aware of, said much about unborn children, about abortion," Bishop Tobin said in September.

This is the same bishop who, with the tone-deaf timing of a dinosaur, chose to speak of Nelson Mandela's support of abortion as "shameful," just as the world was mourning the South African leader's death.

And this is the same bishop who, writing in April in The Rhode Island Catholic, embarked on a hateful rant against homosexuality and chastised President Obama for — I'm not making this up — inviting gay families to the White House Easter Egg Hunt.

"Homosexual activity is unnatural and gravely immoral," Bishop Tobin wrote. "It's offensive to Almighty God. It can never be condoned, under any circumstances. Gay marriage, or civil unions, would mean that our state is in the business of ratifying, approving such immoral activity."

Bishop Robert McManus of the Worcester diocese is a friend of Bishop Tobin, who he called a "good man." While he declined to comment on his counterpart's criticism of the pope, he said he was "surprised and overjoyed" by the pope's selection as Time's Person of the Year.

"This is the man who God wanted to serve the church at this time," Bishop McManus said. "He's caught the world's imagination by his humility ... When he talks about the church, he says it's not an exclusive club. People feel alienated from the church and he wants to reiterate that they're all welcome."

You can indeed judge a man by his enemies. Compare Bishop McManus' comments with those of Shaw of Fox News, who sputtered that Pope Francis "likes to apologize for the Catholic church" just as Obama "loved apologizing for America."

The pope's enemies are on the wrong side of history, but they're performing a service. Each time they criticize a leader who refers to the Catholic church as a field hospital, they're lobbing a fatal wound at their own bankrupt, small-minded vision. Simply put: The pope wants to heal, while his enemies preach hate.